Potatoes, being the staple article of production,
are principally cultivated, as the price of twenty pounds per ton
yields a large profit. These, however, do not produce larger
crops than from four to six tons per acre when heavily manured;
but as the crop is fit to dig in three months from the day of
planting, money is quickly made.
There are many small farmers, or rather gardeners, at Newera
Ellia who have succeeded uncommonly well. One of the emigrants
who left my service returned to England in three years with three
hundred pounds; and all the industrious people succeed. I am now
without one man whom I brought out. The bailiff farms a little
land of his own, and his pretty daughter is married ; the others
are scattered here and there, but I believe all are doing well,
especially the blacksmith, upon whose anvil Fortune has smiled
most kindly.
By the bye, that same blacksmith has the right stamp of a "better
half" for an emigrant's wife. According to his own description
she is a "good knock-about kind of a wife." I recollect seeing
her, during a press of work, rendering assistance to her Vulcan
in a manner worthy of a Cyclop's spouse. She was wielding an
eighteen-pound sledgehammer, sending the sparks flying at every
blow upon the hot iron, and making the anvil ring again, while
her husband turned the metal at every stroke, as if attending on
Nasmyth's patent steam hammer.
It has been a great satisfaction to me that all the people whom I
brought out are doing well; even Henry Perkes, of
elephant-jockeying notoriety, is, I believe, prospering as a
groom in Madras.
CHAPTER III. Task Completed - The Mountain-top - Change in the
Face of Nature - Original Importance of Newera Ellia - "The Path
of a Thousand Princes" - Vestiges of Former Population -
Mountains - The Highlands of Ouva - Ancient Methods of Irrigation
- Remains of Aqueducts - The Vale of Rubies - Ancient Ophir -
Discovery of Gold-Mineral Resources - Native Blacksmiths.
In a climate like that of Newera Ellia, even twelve months make a
great change in the appearance of a new settlement; plants and
shrubs spring up with wonderful rapidity, and a garden of one
year's growth, without attendance, would be a wilderness.
A few years necessarily made a vast change in everything. All
kinds of experiments had been made, and those which succeeded
were persevered in. I discovered that excellent beer might be
made at this elevation (six thousand two hundred feet), and I
accordingly established a small brewery.
The solitary Leicester ram had propagated a numerous family, and
a flock of fat ewes, with their lambs, throve to perfection.
Many handsome young heifers looked very like the emigrant bull in
the face, and claimed their parentage. The fields were green;
the axe no longer sounded in the forests:
